Blackboard acquires LMS competitors Moodlerooms, NetSpot

Mergers and Acquisitions

Blackboard acquires LMS competitors Moodlerooms, NetSpot

Mar 28, 2012

BLACKBOARD gobbles up competitors Moodlerooms, of Baltimore, and NetSpot, of Australia, two LMS providers whose products are built off of the Moodle platform. Terms were not disclosed. The deal, described here by Inside Higher Ed, rocked the higher ed world, which has been increasingly conflicted about Blackboard's technology. Tom Vander Ark welcomes this acquisition as a sign of Blackboard embracing open. Audrey Watters suspects "openwashing." EdSurge liked the comment of Frank Ganis, a principal with the Gilfus Education Group in Washington D.C. (which specializes in education), which suggested that the deal would likely spur innovation both because it will help pump more support behind open source and (perhaps more crucially) because it will spur universities nervous about turning over too much control to a single vendor to seek alternatives.

Learn more about EdSurge operations, ethics and policies here. Learn more about EdSurge supporters here.

More from EdSurge

Get our email newsletterSign me up
Keep up to date with our email newsletterSign me up